OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – Fire crews worked around the clock to extinguish a large fire that sparked Wednesday afternoon at a northeast Oklahoma City recycling plant.
Oklahoma City and Del City firefighters rushed to the scene at Absoloot Recycling near NE 10th and Bryant just before 2 p.m. Wednesday.
“It’s just a large debris pile. There’s vehicles in there, there’s hot water tanks, pretty much anything metal, anything steel. It’s just on fire,” Oklahoma City Fire Captain Scott Douglas told KFOR.
Capt. Douglas said the fire started when an employee, working an excavator, picked one of them up.
“He said he picked up a car and he believed it had fuel in the fuel tank,” said Douglas. “So he just maneuvered the vehicle around, [it] had some gas in it, and a spark hit that gas tank and it just ignited. He said it just exploded.”
Because there isn’t a fire hydrant nearby, fire crews used engines, brush pumpers, and tankers to shuttle water to the scene.
“The tough thing is we have limited access,” said Douglas. “We’re just shuttling water in a little bit at a time. We don’t have the nicety of hooking up to the hydrant, having a constant water supply.”
OKCFD says two grassfires started downwind from lingering sparks, but were small in size and firefighters extinguished them quickly.
OKCFD Hazardous Materials Team and the Storm Water Quality Team were also on-scene monitoring the area for any hazardous run-off, but luckily, both teams reported there was no run-off and all of the water was contained on-site.
After fire crews extinguished the majority of the fire, plant employees used some of their excavators to help firefighters access and extinguish hidden and compartmentalized fires.
Fire crews worked through the night extinguishing hot spots and flare ups with the last rig leaving the scene at 8:30 a.m. Thursday.
Thankfully, no injuries have been reported.
One stationary excavator valued at $600,000 was destroyed in the fire, according to OKCFD.